Progress Is a Process

We're fond of history around here and maybe that’s why we’re slow to recognize the danger of allowing who we once were to prevent us from being who we need to be. I’ve lived in Norwich for almost three decades, which, for many people I meet, is no more than an eye blink, or so it seems.

I've heard a lot, though by no means all, of the 'back in the day' stories about Franklin Square, the sea captains who built houses on Laurel Hill, the Sears and Roebuck (whatever happened to Roebuck, anyway?) store that was the heart of downtown and all about Thursday nights so hectic in the center of The Rose City that small children clung tightly to a parent's hand lest they find themselves in the street and lost in the throng.

These stories, if you will, always have a sepia tinge to them, at least to me, and a soft focus in terms of detail. They always bring a smile to the face of the person telling me the tale. And then, of course, we turn our attention to the present and either no one seems to know what happened, how or why or everyone knows but the reasons involve everyone but themselves.

You’ve heard/read the stories and they all go like this: the people who lived here ‘back then’ woke up one morning and Down City was a ghost town. The stores were all gone and so, too, were the people who shopped in them.

I’m always struck by the unspoken ‘suddenly’ implied in the explanations rather than an acknowledgment of gradual decay and decline that concedes devolution, like its mirror image evolution, always involves progress and planning. The former is relentless and inevitable while the latter is conspicuous in its absence.

To my mind, we spend so much time mourning a past many of us never experienced we cannot, or choose not to, see a present slowly planting and spreading roots that will continue to bear fruit for a lot of tomorrows yet to come.

We're hobbled by the past, even when we weren't here to live or remember it. Instead of using what was as a step of the ladder to tomorrow, it's a hurdle in the steeplechase we've made for our city and ourselves. It wasn’t just Rome that wasn’t built in a day.  A walk through downtown with our eyes and mind open would tell us steady and lasting progress is being made with more to come if we have patience.

Alvin Toffler wrote about Future Shock but that’s not our illness. We suffer from Present Shock and the fear of taking action and having to own the consequences of it.

Maybe tomorrow will be better we sigh. Unless and until it's not, and then still we sit and wait because if we do nothing, we can't do anything wrong. Nothing ever happens, if you don't make it happen. Silence is NOT agreement and we've been too quiet for too long.

-bill kenny